ring ring

oh cell phones ... it took me quite some time to enter into the world of mobile telephone communications. and i must say it has been handy at times. (although, at other times ... it just re-emphasizes the fact that i rarely receive any phone calls .. which is ok, b/c my preferred method of communication isn't via the telephone and as such my phone time is generally limited to giving and receiving logistical details regarding a specific activity.) when i finally did make the plunge, i got a cute little phone. it's shiny, it's silver, it flips and has a colour screen (a far cry from the zack morris phone of yore). all was well and good. or so i thought. unfortunately, i've had a few problems with my phone and have been having some difficulty in resolving them.

the biggest problem is my phone's decision to randomly not ring when ppl call me. so i took the phone back to the store. first, the store helper person called my phone and it rang. they said, it seems to be working fine now. i had to once again explain how this was a RANDOM problem. next, i was given the wonderful explanation that the ringer wasn't on - i.e. this problem was caused by my own idiocy. (this just angered me a bit seeing as i had already told them the story that i was holding my phone in my hand, with the ringer on and the phone gave a little beep and i looked and i had missed a call ... i was holding my phone in my hand at the time b/c i knew it had a
tendency to not ring when i was supposed to be meeting someone somewhere, which was the case at the time) ... so i repeated the story of the phone beeping in my hand. i also added that my phone would either be on vibrate or ring+vibrate ... and i often missed calls when the phone was in my purse, under my arm. the vibration provided by the phone is not something that one easily misses. (my purse isn't so large that the phone gets swallowed into a sea of old cosmetics, wet naps and fuzzy mints).

this was not the only problem with my phone. the other two are more amusing than annoying though (like the above). first... sometimes names in my address book would get combined. for example, say i had jane smitherson and mary browning in my address book. sometimes, when jane would call, in my call history her name would come up as jane smithersoning. it was quite strange. the other problem was again with my call history. i've had called come up in my call history as: 4Ú$ |~|~|~| (note, the tildes came up more as just little speckles than actual tildes ... but i think they work well for the example). i found this display rather strange - so i turned off my phone and turned it back on again. this erased ALL my call history. (the strange
display occurred again and all my call history disappeared ... although ... i must say that i did lose my phone for a short period of time and when i retrieved it, all the call history was gone. but that's a story for another time).

so, after numerous failed attempts to return my phone (they had to send it back to the manufacturer ... so they said they would provide me with a loner phone for a month or two until i got my real phone back ... the first few times i went though, they had no loner phones available) .. i finally succeeded last night. it will take 4 - 6 weeks. in the mean time, i get the loner phone.

the loner phone is the most ghetto phone i've ever seen. maybe aside from the old motorola my parents had back in the late nineties, which was probably 1 step up from the zack morris phone - the loner phone might be 2 steps up from the zack morris phone. it's big, bulky and blue (in a bad way - seeing as i usually do like blue). i'm embarassed to use it!

so just a note to those ppl who read this and have occasion to call my cell phone - if you call my cell phone and i'm not in the privacy of my own home (the privacy where i feel comfortable enough to wear yoga pants and knee high shiny red socks) - i might not answer. and to think that i'm stuck with this monstrosity for a month!

*sigh*

alas, what is a lass to do?